We Must Think The Unthinkable | The Glass Is Already Broken

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:19Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:00We must think the unthinkable. It was a speedboat accident. It was a rare genetic heart disorder. It was an accidental drug overdose. This was how Francis Ford Coppola, Martha Nussbaum, and David Kessler respectively lost their children, a tragic experience that they have talked about both in their work and when they came on the Daily Stoic podcast not too long ago. As Coppola said when I was interviewing him, The loss of a child is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Obviously, no parent deserves such a cruel fate. Most of us wouldn't even consider it a possibility. We'd rather focus on the good times and the good fortune, all the hope that our children represents.

2:44But the Stoics would urge us otherwise. In fact, Marcus really explicitly writes in Meditations that as you kiss your son goodnight, he's quoting Epictetus here, He says, whisper to yourself, he may be dead in the morning. Don't tempt fate, you say. By talking about a natural event, is fate tempted when we speak of grain being reaped? For the Stoics, though, this wasn't some silly academic exercise. The death of a child was very common in ancient times. Marcus Aurelius himself buried not one but nine of his children. Seneca buried an infant son and Cicero, an adult daughter. The point of contemplating this unthinkable reality actually isn't morbid, it's purposeful.

3:27A parent who acknowledges the fragility of life understands that every moment with their child is a gift, and it is not wasted. A wise parent looks at the world harsh as is and says, I see what you're capable of, what you might do to my family tomorrow, but today you've spared us, and I will not take that for granted. And this is how we must live, not just with our children, but with our wealth, the peace in our country, the clear skies above, it can all vanish in an instant. And there's little we can do to prevent that. But what we can do is fully immerse ourselves in the present moment, savoring each present moment we do have as parents, as friends, as individuals, with a sense of gratitude and appreciation.

4:08And we've been talking a lot about Memento Mori here. I have some Memento Moris. I have the memento-mory coin here on my desk. On my mirror and my bathroom, I have a chunk of a tombstone. It just says dad on it. It's just a reminder to me, to you, hopefully, about the fragility and ephemerality of life and the importance of being present. If you want any of these reminders, you can check out store.dailystoic.com. I'll link to the collection in today's show notes. But do listen to that episode with Coppola and Nussbaum and Kessler. They're three of the most moving episodes we've had. Very, very beautiful.

4:47And I learned a lot both as a parent and as a person. I think you will too.

4:53Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

5:38We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

6:18Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. November 22nd. This is the entry from The Daily Stoic. 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. Written by me, Ryan Holiday, and my wonderful co-author and dear friend, Stephen Hanselman. I am holding a cloth-bound first edition. Got a leather-bound edition in The Daily Stoic store. Got an e-book, audio. But actually, it's only on these episodes that you can hear me do it because I did not do the audio of The Daily Stoic. We had a professional voiceover artists do it, but today's quote comes to us from Seneca in his Consolation to Helvia, that's his mother.

7:03He says, fortune falls heavily on those for whom she's unexpected. The one always on the lookout easily endures. There is a story of a Zen master who had a beautifully prized cup. The master would repeat to himself, the glass is already broken. He enjoyed the cup. He used it. He showed it off to visitors, but in his mind, it was already broken. And so one day when it actually did break, he simply said to himself, of course. And this is how the Stoics think too. There is supposedly a true story about Epictetus and a lamp. He never locked his house, and so his expensive lamp was stolen. And when Epictetus replaced it, he replaced it with a cheaper one so it could be less attached to it if it were stolen again.

7:45Devastation, that feeling like we're absolutely crushed and shocked by an event. It's partly a factor of how unlikely we considered that event in the first place. No one is wrecked by the fact that it's snowing in the winter because we've accepted and even anticipated this turn of events. What about the occurrences that surprise us? Well, we might not be so shocked if we took time to consider their very possibility. You know, I took some questions as part of the Daily Stoic 101 challenge, which you can check out. I think it's dailystoic.com slash 101. If you want to do a deeper dive into stoicism, we run it all the time.

8:21It's fantastic. But my favorite part is the office hours. And somebody asked me about stoic paradoxes. And they said, what about the sort of paradox or the seeming contradiction between what Seneca is saying here to sort of go, this thing could happen. I got to be prepared for it. Think about it. Think about it. Think about it. And then not being anxious, right? He says, he who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than it's necessary. I think that story of the Zen master and his cup is a good way to sort of solve for that paradox, right? And I think it's important that the Zen master enjoyed the cup, appreciated the cup.

8:57He prized it. Yet he also told himself it would be gone soon, that he wouldn't get it forever. So he didn't lock it up in a cupboard. He didn't pay a bunch of money to insure it. He didn't, no, don't touch that, get mad at his kids, right? He enjoyed it. He appreciated it. He just understood that it was not bound for this world, that it would not be here forever, that it was in a sense already broken because someday it inevitably would break. And actually, maybe this is a way to understand that really trying rough Marx realist thing that he quotes Epictetus about, saying to yourself as you tuck your kids in at night, they will not make it till the morning.

9:39This isn't detachment. It's not, oh, I don't care. I don't prize the cup. The cup doesn't matter to me. It's no good anyway. The way we sort of preemptively and immaturely push away things that we're afraid of losing. It's designed to do the opposite. I love you. This is amazing. You are so special. You're supposed to be there for the moment with your kids, but know that someday they will grow up. Someday they will move out. Someday something will happen to you or to them. These are statistical certainties, right? Seneca was writing that letter to his mom after he found out he would be exiled.

10:19She was devastated by that news. So Seneca's not talking about this idly. Neither is Marcus Aurelius, right? That exercise must have been so heartbreaking for him because he did have last bedtimes with so many of his children. The Stoics knew this stuff firsthand. And we have the hard-won wisdom of their very painful, devastating experiences. So it's not a paradox. It's reality. And reality is complex. You have something you love and you prize it and you don't want to lose it. But you understand that you will lose it. That you don't get it forever. That fortune behaves exactly as she pleases. We have to be aware of this.

11:00We have to be practical about it. We can't be caught by surprise, right? The unexpected blow lands heaviest, Seneca said, right? You'd prefer that you wake up the next day, and hopefully you will. You wake up the next day and your kids are still there. You reach for the cup in the cabinet and it's still there. Most of the time that will be true. Most of the time your luck will hold. But someday it won't. And Stoicism meditates on that, is aware of that, refuses to deny that, refuses to suffer before it is necessary, but also doesn't exacerbate that suffering by pretending it's impossible or unfair or unlikely, any of that.

11:47It embraces reality. It acts accordingly.

11:55Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com slash email.

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